Horses are good company -- The Witcher

Couple of movies that I do not recommend.

45 Years, director Andrew Haigh, streaming with ads on one of the free services.

I like this director's other work but this film felt like it was 45 years long. It's about 2 long-married white British people whose relationship is not so great. I did not care about them. I think this falls into the "family drama" genre, which is vehemently not my genre because I don't understand the and the people all seem unpleasant.

The Impossible, 2012, Netflix.

More white British people: This film has been rightly criticized among my circles for making a story about a devastating natural disaster in Thailand center on a white tourist family. I was curious because of my interest in survival and disaster narratives and how this film fits into the genre. I agree that this film is racist and classist-- it's so enraging when the reunited family, at the end, leave an over-taxed Thai hospital, get on a private plane to head to a hospital in Singapore... and there are empty seats on that plane. Like some other films in this genre, the plot reinforces the idea of the nuclear family as the central organizing principle of society. The best movies about disaster have a stronger message, one about collective care and helping strangers. There is a moment or 3 in "the Impossible" that get at this-- ones where the mom instructs her son to help others, "even if it's the last thing we do." But this message of helping others gets a bit lost as the mother gets more ill. It seems she is that force in this family.

What I will say in favor of this movie is that it is very respectful in the portrayal of children. Tom Holland plays Lucas, the eldest kid, and he does a great job with it.

Two Spielberg + Tom Hanks movies from the early 2000s.

Catch Me if You Can has such a fun premise: Leo DiCaprio plays a young con man named Frank who gets jobs as an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer. Tom Hanks plays the FBI agent who chases him down. Unfortunately this is played for Serious Drama and Daddy Issues, and was not for me, though overall I think it's an OK movie. The beginning and ending were too long and slow. An editor needed to cut a bunch of stuff out including a very cringey scene with Jennifer Garner as a high-end sex worker. Frank uses his forging skills to cheat her out of 1400 dollars and it's played like some kind of gross male fantasy.

The story goes something like, Frank really wants to please his father (Christopher Walken), and this leads him down a wrong path. The right path is finding a positive father figure in the Tom Hanks character.

If you like con artist stories, Leverage is just so much better. "The Pretender" is another example of a story where someone uses his genius skills to help people and is much more warm and fun.

The Terminal also has an interesting premise but it fails to deliver. An Eastern European man, Viktor (Tom Hanks) becomes temporarily stateless and gets stuck living in a airport. This was SUCH a frustrating movie, because it had a bunch of things going for it-- good actors, some comedy, a familiar setting that gets re-contextualized, and the potential to say something interesting. But the story structure was bad. You'd think that before someone spent all that money making a movie, they would make sure the story and script are good. That is the FIRST thing one should do, the foundation.

Stanley Tucci plays the antagonist, a guy in charge of the airport, and his character is all over the place, no clear motivation or development, does not act in any kind of consistent way. There was a great moment where I thought this story might be about resisting a police state (airport as metaphor/tiny police state), or finding ways to resist and de-escalate the conflict of policing, but of course it didn't hold up.

Catherine Zeta-Jones, similar. She spends the movie getting to know Viktor and breaking away from her bad boyfriend. But then in the end she goes back to the boyfriend for no reason.

Zoe Saldana and Diego Luna were both super cute, but their romance was not well developed and ended up making no sense at all.

So, anti-rec for this film.

What my family and I absolutely love watching is The Incredible Dr. Pol, a reality-based show about farm veterinarians in Michigan. Dr. Pol is an old man with a ton of energy, a ton of experience, humor, warmth, a great love for animals. It's streaming on Hulu and we watched 3 or 4 episodes before the technology gave up on me. We used to watch it on cable but my parents gave up cable; maybe I'll see if I can borrow some DVDs or something. There are several various vet shows with a lot of episodes and this could keep us happily entertained in the evenings. (nota bene, I made a festivid about vet shows.)

We all find Dr. Pol and his colleagues super engaging and my dad even shared a story I hadn't heard him tell before, about his dad pulling a calf. He said his dad put the pulling rope around his shoulders, put his feet up on the back of the cow, and put his whole weight into it. On the show they have a chain-and-ratchet method for pulling calves that are stuck.

My dad said, "We're farm people, but I wonder what non-farm people think of this show?" It's true that they show a lot of the down and dirty of small farms and I love this. Unlike some other vet shows, Dr. Pol does not over-treat or over-test. The vets also see all kinds of animals: lizards, turkeys, camels, reindeer, parrots, chickens, etc.

I have lighthouses on my mind lately.

I watched the film "The Lighthouse" because it was nominated for Festivids, and for some reason I did watch to the end, but I fast-forwarded through many parts of it.
The premise involves a new assistant lightkeeper arriving at a lighthouse in 1890, to join the more experienced keeper. Their relief does not arrive due to heavy storms, and they start having visions and nightmares and get violent. The setting is depicted as bleak, cold, disgusting; it's filmed in black and white with a sort of squarish aspect ratio.

It's supposed to be psychological horror, though I did not find it scary; I was hoping the mermaids and monsters were real. I enjoy the weirdness of Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, but that was about all I got out of it. I'm mystified by how this was nominated for an Oscar. I suppose the film was trying something, being experimental, but in my mind it did not succeed.

So anyways, then I read a very good Harry Potter fanfiction with a similar premise, but that is worlds better.

That Which Shall Not be Unearthed by anonymous (I believe the author will be revealed at some point as it's part of a challenge).

Harry takes a job as a lighthouse keeper because he wants to get away from society and live somewhere peaceful and remote, to deal with his depression and PTSD. When he arrives, he finds that the other keeper is Draco Malfoy, and they will both be working the job for the next year. It's been long enough since they saw each other, that they are different people now, and are accepting of each other's presence.

This story has a creepy element to it which involves dreams and visions, but of course the magic is real, and it's not some kind of lesson about isolation driving someone mad. This mysterious magical through-line complements the cozy romance of Harry and Draco getting to know one another in a beautiful, small, remote place. They see the aurora borealis and admire the sea. They drink whisky in front of a fireplace and cuddle on the sofa. Their work is soothing to them, as it involves physical activity and straight-forward tasks that can be accomplished with not much difficulty. It's a balm for these damaged people to work this job.

Lighthouses are inherently interesting, and it was fun to read a story that takes place in one.

I need things to watch so I tried "The Angel," on Netflix, because it has Marwan Kenzari from the Old Guard. He is pretty, but this movie is a massive bore. Not recommended. Kenzari plays a real-life Egyptian spy, Ashraf Marwan, a government official who spied for Israel during the 1970s. His motives aren't clear and as a character he's not especially well-developed. The acting is good but the script is just flat.

Some good news today from around the world:
1. Elliot Page, actor from the X-Men, Inception, and the Umbrella Academy, came out as trans. I'd link to an article but they all seem to either dead-name Page, and/or use a screen shot of text that is inaccessible.

2. Cher helped re-home an elephant called Kaavan. He was alone at a zoo in Pakistan, but is now in Cambodia at a sanctuary with other elephants. They put him on a plane and he slept on the journey.
Here's an article, note that it has an auto-play video: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-elephant-idUSKBN28A0VP

"Hollywood" on Netflix is a new limited series by Ryan Murphy and Janet Mock (both are queer). I don't mean to yuck anyone's yum, but this show is a MESS. I was with it for the first episode or two, but it was very rushed at the end, and is the kind of show where I keep thinking about new things that bothered me.

This show is mostly about a group of people in 1947 Hollywood who are trying to make a progressive film, at first called "Peg" but later changed to "Meg." The film is about a struggling actress trying to make it in Hollywood, so there are 3 levels of meta going on here: it's a show about a movie about an actress, which is ambitious, and interesting, but ultimately unsuccessful.

There are some good things going for this show: good actors, older women in powerful roles, queer people, fun 1947 fashion, and people who are trying to help each other out.

( anti-squee )

Jesse said something interesting today about violence in media, in this case in The Expanse: horrible things are treated as horrible, and reflect on morality. The society is dangerous, and the characters are not only trying to stay alive, but are trying to save the world.

I watched Mr. Right the other day on Netflix. This is a comedy about a hitman who falls in love while trying to reform his ways. I find Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick charming on their own, and they were charming together. But the violence in this movie is not treated seriously. I don't like to see death treated so cavalierly, which is my problem with "cozy" murder mysteries too. I was perhaps not in the right mind-set for this movie, but I'm also not sure I ever will be.

I also watched a comedy special today, by Fortune Feimster, on Netflix. It is great to see a fat lesbian on TV always, but this was disappointing: she jokes about loving to eat, makes a couple of diabetes "jokes", and talks about intentional weight loss. I liked the parts that were about her family, being gay, and about growing up in the South, but it always seemed to come back to the fat jokes. It made me think about what Hannah Gadsby has said on this topic:

"Do you understand what self-deprecation means when it comes from someone who is already in the margins? It's not humility. It's humiliation. I put myself down in order to speak, in order to seek permission to speak."

Netflix is a blessing for me because it helps me rest and gives me something to do when I'm feeling especially ill. Here are some non-fiction shows I watched recently.

All in My Family

This filmmaker, Hao Wu, is a gay man living in New York with his partner. His parents and extended family live in China. This documentary is about his family and their reactions to him, his partner, and their new kids. I kind of hated this: his mother is a nightmare by my standards. There is not a lot of pushback against the family's homophobia and other biases (the father speaks of pinching the babies' noses to make them less flat, for example). 40 minutes.

Diagnosis

Lisa Sanders runs the diagnosis column for the NY Times, and I enjoyed her book, "Every Patient Tells a Story." She seems like a deeply kind and thoughtful person. However, this show is extremely flawed. The episodes are approximately 45 minutes when the material to fill them is about 20 minutes' worth. The premise itself is troublesome: assuming that there exists a diagnosis for every patient. There are plenty of un-discovered or un-characterized illnesses, and many diagnoses that are syndromes or just a latin description of symptoms. Some of the episodes were deeply frustrating to watch. Not recommended.

Blown Away

Just a fun and beautiful show that is a glass-blowing competition. I liked this a lot. The episodes are short and I would have liked more technical explanations, but OTOH they moved along nicely.

Exhibit A

Four gripping episodes explore junk science that is used in courts to scapegoat and railroad (probably) innocent people. Each episode explores a particular case, a particular defendant, and the type of forensic "science" used to go after the person. This material was so thought-provoking and enraging!

Episode 1 is about video; in this case the video itself was not flawed, but the prosecution brought in an "expert" who had some kind of fake technology that convinced the jury that the video was lying to them, that the perpetrator was not 5'7" but was actually 6'2". The interviews with this so-called expert are WILD; he acts totally convinced of his own bullshit.

The other topics are: cadaver dogs, Touch DNA, and blood spatter.

These episodes are very skillfully made, and I recommend this if you are interested in the material. Some of it is very upsetting (murder, child abduction, etc). There was also a shelved episode about bite mark analysis (https://www.talkhouse.com/the-lost-pilot-episode-of-exhibit-a-in-words-and-photos/). I admire Netflix for having this documentary along with "Making a Murderer" and "The Keepers", which are critical of police and district attorneys. It's clear to me that there are terrible systemic problems and that forensic science (so called) is one of the tools in the toolbox of evil and corruption.

Agora

I noped out of this one about half way through because it was dreary. Rachel Weisz as Hypatia was great, but she was apparently the only woman in all of Alexandria, if this film is to be believed. It bothered me that even her slave, who attended to her in the bath, was male. There was something very sad, almost joyless, about this film, so I turned it off and read the Wikipedia summary instead.

Mute - netflix

Not awful, but certainly not good. A disappointing showing from Duncan Jones, who previously directed Moon and Source Code. In a near-future Berlin, a mute bartender searches for his missing girlfriend. The circle these two moved in is full of seedy members of organized crime, including black-market surgeons who torture people. We eventually find out that the protagonist's girlfriend has been murdered. Oh, and she was the only woman in the film, except for some small roles for sex workers (Florence Kasumba! what are you doing in this movie?). And there is a totally unnecessary and strange sub-plot around pedophilia. A very WTF movie.

I tried a couple of shows out and rejected them:

Hap and Leonard (on Netflix)
I wanted to like this because the guy who plays Omar on the Wire (Michael K. Williams) plays a gay Vietnam vet. But after a couple of episodes, I didn't like any of the characters. Williams' character, Leonard, was OK, but everyone else was mean and horrible.

Limitless (on Netflix)

A movie spin-off. Brian thinks of himself as a loser and a disappointment to his dad, even though his dad is supportive. He takes a drug called NZT, which temporarily turns him into a super-genious. I enjoyed the pilot because he used his genious for a bunch of things, like diagnosing his father's illness, solving a murder, playing music really well in a park, and talking to people about their problems (social intelligence!). But in the 2nd episode, it's clear that this is just another procedural about a white guy who is a rule-breaking genious for the FBI. He gets away with his rule-breaking because he produces results (and also b/c privilege). The science in the 2nd episode was also pretty bad: an engineered flu strain that was supposedly used for assasinations. Riiiiight. I stopped watching.

I settled on an addictive, violent, perhaps overly dramatic, gripping show on Hulu: BLACK SAILS. This has lots of queerness and is very pretty.

I read the first two volumes of "Sex Criminals" by Fraction and Zdarksy. I was annoyed because it has a great concept but could have been so much better than it is.

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